CASE STUDY:

POLAR SATELLITE LAUNCH VEHICLE

(PSLV)

Indian Institute of Technology Mandi

By:  
Ayush  Yadav  
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 Table of Contents

1 PSLV: History 3

2 Technical Details 4

3 Current Scenario 6

4 Modifications Proposed 7

5 International Relations 10

6 Conclusion 12

7 Bibliography 13

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 Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle: History

Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle or PSLV is a expendable rocket system designed

solely in India by Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) and is operational
since 1993. It was the great leap in the rocket launch and development capability of
India and its continuous success is reason, to expect more from India in future.
With the recent extraordinary success in the Lunar unmanned missions and putting
a satellite in the orbit of Mars, Mangalayaan, is in itself a epitome of success for
Indian Space research.

When India started its space program USA was already on its Moon mission in
1969 via Apollo Mission. ISRO was officially established on 15th August, 1969
superseding Indian National Committee for Space Research (INCOSPAR). ISRO
works under the Department of Space, Government of India. Although it started
late, ISRO was quick to grasp the grip of Space research around the world and start
on a totally new level. It was just before the Shuttle Program started that the first
Indian satellite was put in orbit by an Indian made launch vehicle (Satellite Launch
vehicle-3). The reason for this comparison between the NASA’s projects is made to
keep in mind the late start of the Indian Space Program and yet so much has been
achieved successfully. India is the first country to be successful in its maiden inter
planetary mission to Mars (Mangalayaan) and also achieve the goal of the cheap
space launch system and missions. NASA had one of its founding goals to reduce
the costs of space missions but it struggles to meet that goals whereas India is
marching ahead in this area with a record cheap mission without any compromise
in the Quality or Safety.
PSLV is one of the most successful Space launch vehicle of the world till date,
with only one failure in its maiden flight on 20th September 1993. PSLV holds a
world record of launching 10 satellites in a single launch in April, 2008, beating
Russia. Today success of PSLV is tried to be emulated by various Space agencies
of the world. Till date there have been 28 launches of PSLV with only one failure.
It has been used to put around 71 satellites in orbit (mostly sun synchronous orbit)
of which 31 are Indian and rest 40 are satellites of different countries. This

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difference in number indicates that the credibility of ISRO as a satellite launching
agency with greater success rates and lower costs over other notable space
agencies. This is a great reason to be proud of for India but all this great work is in
vain if we fail to understand the market of world and its needs. In the future, as we
look, it is clear that commercial flights to space for satellites, probes, manned
laboratories for ISS, cargo carriage to Space Laboratories, fuel supplies to rovers,
and repairs of all the stuff in space will be in a great demand. If we were to capture
this market and have our strong hold, it would be the most beneficial enterprise for
India. We are going to discuss at length the possibilities to tap the soul of this
growing market and the ways to increase our capabilities to stand there. We will
give our own recommendations for upgrading the PSLV and how, with minimal
inputs can we get maximum output.

Technical Details of current PSLV

Weight : 294,000 kgs.

Height : 44.4 mt.
Diameters : 2.8 mt.
Stages : 4
Payload -
1600 kgs. in 620 km Polar Orbit
1060 kgs. in GTO
Total Launches : 28
Success : 26
Failure : 1
Partial failure :1
Designs : PSLV
PSLV-CA
PSLV-XL
Initial Thrust : 4430 kN (booster thrust; largest solid fuel rocket booster in world)
6 Strap-On motors, each having 677kN of thrust

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Fuel Type : Alternate Solid and Liquid Fuel propellent
Solid Fuel : hydroxy terminated polybutadiene (HTBP)
Liquid Fuel : unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine and nitrogen tetraoxide as
oxidizer
monomethly hydrazine for 4th stage

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 Current Scenario of Space Research and Exploration

With the advent of ISS and Shuttle Missions there has been a increased awareness
of the Space Exploration among the general masses. With the ISS being built from
the scratch, bit by bit, piece by piece, and today it flies above the Earth with
humans in orbit every second of the day. It has fuel supplies and other cargo
supplies to use. With the conclusion of Shuttle mission, given their failure rates and
costs, it was concluded that unmanned satellites can fulfill the purpose of cargo
supplies and cheap alternate missions like Soyuz can fulfill the purpose of human
transportation.
There have been continued explorations of the Cosmos via various probes
traversing the deep, dark space, and the increased demand of satellite transmissions
of signals have given a lot more reason for research in this field. Almost all the
Space Agencies around the world have been trying a long time to find something
concrete to end the problem of efficient transport to space. Another aspect which is
generally forgotten is the repairs and replacement of satellites put in orbit already.
When the space race started between former USSR and USA their main aim was a
efficient and deadly rocket for carrying the nuclear warheads to far distance which
later culminated into putting objects in space and rest all is history. Today we are
so belittling the use of rockets and its importance that we do not even spare a
thought to the techniques and ingenuity involved in its development. Its a
controlled explosion basically and when we muster technique to conquer
something like that, it must not go unnoticed and development in that field should
continue.
While there exists rockets around the world that were considered best but for the
lack of R&D it has been a stagnant technology and with this fast moving world it
has become obsolete. India on the other hand with its PSLV program made a
enormous progress and gained a high stature on the international stage.
The demands that are going to be in the near future are of putting space labs in
orbit, GPS satellites, weather satellites, remote sensing and imaging and the
Defense Projects etc. With the increase payload capacity and credibility of the
PSLV and ISRO in the commercial circles, the day is not far when ISRO will stand
as equal or maybe more than NASA in stature.

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 Modifications Proposed

The current PSLV rocket is capable of

sending the satellites unto the weight
of 1200 Kgs. in sun synchronous
orbits around earth. The rocket system
currently uses 4 stages of alternate
solid liquid fuel propellent and 6
strap-on motors during launch for
pitch/yaw control.
It must also be noted that PSLV has
been a fairly 100% successful mission
as first flight was more of a test flight
and was unsuccessful for the
following reasons.
It was due to a error in the software of
the third stage auto-pilot. There was a
attitude disturbance while the
movement and separations from 2nd
stage to the 3rd stage of the rocket
causing the attitude commands to
exceed values and with the error in
the software the wrong commands
could not be checked and the pitch control failed leading to the failure of achieving
orbit. Later the Rocket crashed in Bay of Bengal after 700 seconds into flight.
Later the problem was traced back to the retro rocket which had to provide the
necessary thrust for the separation of 3rd stage rocket from the spent 2nd stage. this
retro rocket gave the disturbance and lead to the failure of the launch. From this
failed mission ISRO had many things to learn. All its other systems operated
optimally like aerodynamics, propulsion, navigation etc. With the changes
incorporated from the failure of first flight ISRO had its successful 2nd flight to
put IRS-P2 successfully in orbit. Later in its fourth launch, its first operational

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flight C1, there was a partial failure as the required orbit level was not reached by
the rocket, leaving the satellite short of its orbit which was later propelled up to its
desired orbit using its own fuel. The problem occurred because of the leak of
Helium gas which was used for pressurizing the liquid propellent of the fourth
stage, rendering the fuel useless. The reduced fuel pressure means that the fuel is
no longer good to use in the engines which use pressurized mixture of gases. This
gave the onboard computers to have a impression that the fuel is exhausted and led
to the release of payload in a lower orbit. Considering that the satellite was not
harmed it should be kept in a successful missions.
While we had look at the past and then successfully executed 25 missions to the
space including some of the famous payloads like Mars Orbiter Mission and
Chandrayaan (Lunar Orbiter). We have learnt a great deal form out past in this field
and we continue to develop more. With the GSLV under test and GSLV MK-III
under development we have high hopes from ISRO in the commercial usage and
exploitation of the market to put payloads of different clients in space.

As for the modifications that we suggest are as follows :-

• The current fuel propulsion system of alternate solid and liquid stages must be
changed to a newer approach of having a 3 staged rocket with only one stage of
solid rocket boosters and rest two being liquid fuel stage coupled with increased
capacity strap-on rocket motors. With the increase in the initial thrust the use of
the thrust in higher stages will be reduced and this will reduce the weight and
increase the space for payload in the rocket. This will increase the efficiency of
the rocket manifold.

• A bold idea must be adopted in the rocket development if it has to be

commercial in its application. With every launch employing the use of a new
rocket is not very efficient system and neither is a very environment friendly
way as every time new rocket requires metals and other natural resources. So a
system of reusable rocket body must be employed. This kind of system is
currently in practice in shuttle missions in its solid rocket boosters(SRB’s)
which are recovered after every launch from the Pacific ocean. The same

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 technique can be employed in PSLV and to use the Bay of Bengal and India
Ocean for recover of the used rocket. This will help a lot in improvement of
efficiency and reduction of costs.

• The weight of the craft in itself is a great thing to be worried about. To reduce
this weight a hybrid material is to be developed. Currently simple alloys are
used which provide either heat protection or strength but with the research in
material sciences it is possible to come up with a material that is capable of
handling high stresses and temperatures apart from being lightweight. These
materials must be able to tolerate high stresses at higher altitudes at high
velocities and acceleration. These must also support the reusable approach
towards rockets as discussed earlier.

• The launching site must be changed to support easy launch system. The current
air boundaries and sea boundaries of Sri Lanka influence the flights initial
launch maneuvers which makes the PSLV lose some of its precious time and
fuel leading to a approximately 500 Kgs. of payload loss. If by a MoU Sri Lanka
gives the permission, we can significantly increase our capacity without any
technical changes in the rocket design.

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 International Relations for Commercial Purpose

All of the listed modifications are of no use until and unless there is a potential
market for the service that we provide or if we are not able to tap the market
potential in time. If we see the current scenario, number of commercial launches is
increasing and luckily for india, the countries are interested towards a cheaper and
reliable option that we provide but this should not mean we don’t have to innovate.
By innovation only we will be able to stay in this ever increasing profitable market.
The first step towards this would be to give a message to the world that India is
independent in terms of its technologies and is not dependent on any country for its
supplies of technological expertise. We must carry out our independent research in
astronomy, Physics, Mathematics, astro-Physics and other fields that help the
development of the rocket in India. This will instill a sense of confidence in the
clients that the rocket taking their precious payload is a work of original ingenuity
and not a assembly product with parts taken from various different places which
may or may not be compatible with each other.
Next step will be setting up facilities and a setup on the lines of Jet Propulsion
Laboratory-CalTech by NASA. This is a novel mechanism to include the best of
college in the direct missions of NASA and have their novel and unique ideas in
motion without any delay. The graduates, post-doctoral fellows are handling Mars
Rovers and many other important live missions in space for NASA and analyzing
data’s from over a dozens of unmanned probes including Kepler, Voyager-1,2 and
many other. If a such a facility is developed in India under the aegis of ISRO and
Govt. of India. This will be great impetus for students to pursue Higher studies in
India and not look towards NASA and other international space agencies for jobs.
It maybe noted here that more than half of NASA’s technical staff is of Indian
origin. This clearly speaks for the talent present in out country, we just need to tap
that talent. We must also call upon various internationally acclaimed scientist and
colleges to have their researches in our facilities.
The next step would be to have missions like Mars Orbiter Mission and
Mangalayaan beyond Mars to moons of Jupiter and Saturn and explore Titan and
IO which have many mysteries to be solved. These missions will give some
valuable contribution to the knowledge of the space and give a impetus to valuable

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research in India and ISRO will have its name in limelight for such important
missions. All these missions will prove that ISRO is capable of greater skills than
what the world expects, and this will instill confidence among clients to trust ISRO
with their satellites.
Another important thing to be kept in mind is the flexibility towards different
needs of the client. If we are flexible then we can expect our client base to expand
as everyone has different needs and payloads and depending on those needs we
will have to change our payload space from time to time. One thing which is the
current USP of PSLV series is its cheap launch, this must be maintained as it is to
keep the USP in our hand.

Apart from the above listed methods there could be other methodology that can be
employed to make better use of the market and get the best out of it. These were
only some basic suggestions to make sure better development environment is
provided for attracting the clients from around the world.
With the comparison being made with the Maven of NASA and Mars Orbiter
Mission of ISRO, it must be noted that the missions and aims of the two missions
are completely different. While for NASA it is sophisticated measurements and
data relay systems for its rover missions and its other satellites already in orbit of
Mars, for ISRO it was a maiden attempt towards interplanetary mission with only
basic equipments being sent to test the functioning of equipments and control
systems in space from the available technical ground support. While both countries
were in for a different goals, making comparisons for costs and time are irrelevant
and vague and don't have valid base and logic behind them. A rather logical
inquisition would be to compare the first missions of NASA to Mars or to
interplanetary regions and that of other space agencies to different planets or
heavenly bodies. In such a comparisons, success in maiden attempt gives ISRO a
easy win.
If there are to be any future plans ISRO must think it through and execute it with
some improvements in the designs of the initial rocket boosters for a heavier probe
with greater scientific instruments and facilities on it. The adoption of a completely
new Rocket system will not be totally bad but going on with PSLV will help and
PSLV is capable enough to handle this amount of cargo. But as the demands may
be in future a new rocket can be put to use and its development can be started now.

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 Conclusion

With the ideas and suggestions listed above in the study it is clear that ISRO will
have great and important role to play in the future of space exploration and rocket
development. PSLV today is its greatest weapon/asset to showcase around the
world, the development and current scenario of Indian research. NASA is a body
which is into existence since long time and has been given a lot of grants and has
best technical experts with them , whereas on the other hand ISRO is politically
influenced in its choices and lacks good research facilities.
It must also be noted that development of a newer rocket system must be on the
charts but the current PSLV must not be discarded completely and important
experiences from its flights and machines must be taken from it and used in the
future flights.
The GSLV and GSLV MK-III,II under development are going to be the successors
of the PSLV age of rockets. With such rockets in India’s fleet it will be very easy
for us to have our monopoly over the expanding market.
It is maybe hard to compete with Space agency like NASA and to expand your
market but it is not impossible. We must strive hard to make this happen and play
our crucial role in achieving all this. By continuous hard work one day ISRO will
become one of the best space agency and not one of the best but rather ‘The Best’.

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 Bibliography

• www.isro.org
• http://www.isro.org/pslv-c19/Imagegallery/launchvehicle.aspx
• http://www.isro.org/launchvehicles/PSLV/pslv.aspx
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Space_Research_Organisation
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_Satellite_Launch_Vehicle#Planned_launches
• www.hal-india.com/Aerospace/products.asp
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expendable_launch_system
• http://www.frontline.in/static/html/fl1612/16120370.htm
• http://www.spaceflight101.com/pslv-launch-vehicle-information.html
• http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/science/pslvc21-sends-french-
spot-6-japanese-satellite-into-orbit/article3877021.ece
• www.spacelaunchreport.com/pslv.html#config
• http://www.topnews.in/successful-episode-created-isro-launching-pslv-
rocket-2266662
• http://fineartamerica.com/featured/1-pslv-c2-space-rocket-indian-space-research-
organisation.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Orbiter_Mission
• http://www.isro.org/mars/home.aspx
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Space
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-1
• http://www.isro.gov.in/Chandrayaan/htmls/home.html

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